


Unseen

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse, unrequited Carol/Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is more to Carol than what they see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unseen

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 207. Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt "foodist"
> 
> * * *

Carol remembers taking pleasure in the presentation.

It wasn't even that Ed insisted on it (though he did, the best china and serving dishes laid out on crisp linen, cut glass decanters and her mother's sterling silver and everything just right.) She took pride in it, too – in the arrangement of the food on the plates, the sprig of fresh parsley on top of each grilled pork chop, the glazed carrots done to the perfect blend of sweetness and crispness. Ed thought she was doing it for him, but the reality was that preparing food in her kitchen was one of the few things that she could control, one of the few places where she was truly in charge. 

Being able to cook that one meal in the farmhouse was a dream. And not just because it took her mind off Sophia (and she knew they were not going to find her daughter, she knew it in her heart, just as she knew that if she expressed this knowledge to the others they would look at her in surprise and sadness and pity.) For one brief moment, marinating the fresh chicken breasts in herbs and dicing the carrots into neat quarter-inch cubes, she is in her element. She is the Carol that exists in her heart. Not the widow of the man who treated her with disdain and ruled her with his fists; not the mother of a missing (dead, she knows Sophia is dead) child. 

Now that awkward dinner – awkward for the others, she is used to sitting in silence at the dinner table, concentrating on her food – is over. Now she is back to being the Carol that everyone has come to know in the weeks since the dead began to walk: weak, useless, a burden. 

Carol crouches over an open fire pit, stirring scrambled eggs in a battered iron skillet. The only sounds are the brush of her spatula over the bottom of the pan, the metallic sweep of Andrea's knife over the grater that she's using to hone the weapon to a deadly, lethal edge. Even the birds are silent. Carol makes her rounds, distributing food to the others before cracking some more eggs into the bowl in preparation for round two. She studies the flames as the eggs quickly cook under her direction, light and fluffy even with such rudimentary tools. 

She finds her eyes drawn to Daryl, his shoulders bowed as he hunches over the plate of eggs, his concentration on the food broken every thirty seconds when he lifts his head to scan the camp and the fields beyond. His eyes meet hers, once; they linger no longer than they do when he flicks his gaze away to Rick and Lori, Dale, Glenn pacing restlessly at the edge of the beaten-down grass that limits the edge of the campsite. Daryl has gone out every day searching for Sophia, has fallen down a cliff for her, been attacked by walkers on the hunt for her, has been stabbed and shot and almost died for her. And it comes to Carol that her gratefulness to him has been growing slowly, almost imperceptibly, turning into something more. Something deeper, more profound than mere gratitude. Something that makes her palms damp and her heart race. 

Daryl's eyes flick past her again, and she's sure he sees nothing more than a tired, pale woman in a frowsy sweater. 

She rises from the fire pit and brings him more eggs.

She'll take care of him the only way she knows how.


End file.
